Three Areas of Social Need:

1. Increased bike use - There is a wide array of other disparate societal problems facing the world that are solved by biking.

They generally fall into three broad categories: Transportation, Health, and the Environment. From a transportation perspective the amount of road space used by a single person on a bike is significantly less than a person in a car, the impact on cost of road maintenance and construction due to a bikes lower weight is significant. Bikes unlike cars are not separated from the driving environment and result in a much more personal traffic interaction. Biking also satisfies these basic transportation needs at the same time that it provides exercise. People actually drive to a gym to workout then drive home, an insane proposition when compared to biking for exercise and transportation. America has serious obesity problems which could be greatly reduced by widespread biking. Biking is also largely a carbon neutral form of transportation, especially when compared to the alternatives of using a motorized vehicle. Our dependence upon foreign oil supplies and the entire host of geopolitical issues that go along with that dependence could be greatly reduced if not eliminated by widespread biking.

2. Global Climate Change and Renewable Energy:
The greatest challenge facing our generation is the way in which we will come up with solutions to the myraid problems that global climate change will cause. Any solution that can prevent more CO2 from entering the atmosphere needs to be implemented now because the effects climate change is having not just on the natural world but also upon an enormous portion of the population are disastrous. Bangladesh will basically disappear with sea level rise. Think of the geo-political ramifications of an entire country of refugees. Multiply that on a global scale and it is a monumental problem worsening almost all other current areas of social need.

3. Improved Food Knowledge:
We are faced with rapidly increasing childhood obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise which causes over 30o thousand deaths each year. Obesity is estimated to cost society nearly $100 billion a year. These are crazy numbers. Think what could be done with 100 billion in health care spending. For me I feel that a lot of this problem is rooted in a decline in cooking of good, simple food at home and a transition, especially among the poor, to heavily processed and packaged food. It seems that many families are not taught how to make food from the standard unprocessed ingredients at the grocery store. I personally love to cook and see an enormous potential for educating people on ways to make low cost healthy food for their family that can be a key to escaping the cycle of poverty.

Here are some local Providence, RI area organizations working on these issues.

1. Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council

2 Recycle-a-bike

3. Farm Fresh Rhode Island